


Black and White and Dead All Over

by Answrs



Category: Mystery Skulls Animated
Genre: (She Gets Better), Blood and Gore, Don't worry, Gen, Multi, Temporary Character Death, The OT3 Gets More Obvious As Time Goes On, Title and Summary Subject to Change, ZomVi AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-08-24
Packaged: 2019-06-23 08:09:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15602061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Answrs/pseuds/Answrs
Summary: She wakes feeling numb.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The hardest thing about posting older works is _figuring out the darn **TITLES** for them_ (suggestions welcome in the comments!)

They’re facing some hulking, brute of a creature with leathery black skin and too many teeth, summoned by a cult to deal with them as they perform their ritual. It lunges straight at Arthur and Vivi shoves him out of the way, getting herself grabbed in the process. She blacks out screaming in agony ( _pAIN PAIN OH GOD IT_ **_HURTS_ ** ) as it swipes huge claws down from shoulder to hip, tearing open her chest like the world’s most morbid birthday pinata. Ha ha, birthday. Because she feels like she’s going to die.

 

* * *

 

 

She wakes feeling numb, her nose overwhelmed by the smell of blood and… something she can only describe in her groggy state of mind as “sparkles”. She’s sprawled on the ground, Arthur and Lewis kneeling, crying above her and oh god they’re covered in blood and _no no is anyone hurt where’s mystery shit shit shit what happened is everyone okay-_

She feels so heavy, she tries and fails to lift her arm but her fingers twitch, startling Lewis into looking down at her.

“Vi?”

“ _H…ey Lew…_ ” even speaking is a monumental effort “ _wha…a I miss?_ ” she manages to croak out.

Arthur is staring at her, a mix of wide eyed confusion and total heartbreak. She decides she doesn’t like that look on him at all. If she could move she would hug him, but well, maybe later when they get home and all take a shower. She suddenly remembers the gruesome color covering her friends and wonders where it all came from. “ _I…is ev…ry…one a’…ight? M’s…ery?_ ” Arthur lets out a laugh that’s more a choked sob than anything else while Lewis responds, voice soft “The three of us are… unharmed. Mystery is just hunting down stray cultists. He should be back soon…”

Lewis pauses, sharing a pained look with Arthur. They seem to hold a conversation, but Vi’s brain is too sluggish to follow what they might be saying. Lewis had put his jacket over her, she notices. She wishes it was warmer. It’s cold.

“Vi, do… do you remember what happened? With the cult?”

Her head hurts.

“ _Th…r was… t..hey set a …bear on us…_ ”

She feels like she’s forgetting something.

“ _Th..n we were run..ning… n'then pain…_ ”

Something important.

“Yeah Vi,” Arthur whispers, “the thing was aiming for me and you saved me. But… but then…” He looks like he might be sick, tears coming out again in full force. “Then you… Mystery got it an killed it an’ they all scattered an’ I tried to help b… but… but you… y…”

His last words are blurred together as he curls up closer above her, mindless to the red soaking into his hair. The color looks good on him, not like the rotting green she sometimes sees in her dreams.

“’m so sorry Vi, I tried to get here quick as I could but I was too late I should've been faster this shouldn’t have happened to you not like this-”

There’s something on the very tip of her brain. Something big and important and scary and she’s starting to slip back into the dark again.

“ _nng, n’t y'rr fault…_ ”

“Vi, stay with us!” Lewis grasps her shoulder, but she can barely feel it with the numbness. “Please just- Mystery’s almost back, don’t… You want to make sure he’s alright, yeah?”

“ _n…nnh, m'trust you…. ’m too… s…sleepy-_ ”

“ ** _Vivi!_ ** ”

The world goes black.


	2. Chapter 2

She wakes feeling cold.

 

She comes to on something soft, mind cloudily noting the feeling of her bed in Lewis’ mansion, but the only thing registering the feeling of her stomach trying to gnaw its way out of her chest. She groggily untangles herself from the bedsheet, arms crossing over herself in an effort to keep warm as she shuffles to the door. When she goes to open it, already mentally preparing a list of what to raid from the fridge, she’s startled when the handle jiggles but fails to turn. She blinks in surprise and then dumb shock - is her door  _ locked _ ? As her eyes stare uncomprehendingly at the knob her mind notices something off about the skin not covered by the arm still wrapped around herself.

A sense of overwhelming dread fills her as she slowly, oh so slowly, tilts her head to stare down at her chest. Mutely, she lifts her hand away and the dawning sense of wrongness blossoms into utter horror.

 

She  **_screams_ ** .

 

* * *

 

Lewis is reorganizing the living room for the third time that hour, trying to keep his hands busy and mind from wandering to the cor- bod-  _ Vivi _ in the room upstairs when he hears the bloodcurdling scream clear across the mansion. Flames roar behind him as he races to the room, only barely remembering to turn intangible to not literally burst through the wall in his haste.

Despite his dramatic entrance, Vivi takes no notice of him, staring frozen with her hand on the doorknob, down at her wrapped chest, bandages almost soaked through with her own blood. It’s like a scene from one of her horror films, an unsuspecting subject waking to slowly find themselves the victim of a terrible surgery.

 

**_“Vivi!”_ **

 

It’s only the cry of her name that has her head snapping up, terrified bloodshot eyes meeting equally horrified purple flames. She whimpers, feeling faint, still unable to feel the pain and in dread of when it will suddenly strike her. The ghost meanwhile is stunned at how just a few hours has changed her appearance, a chalky pallor must be the result of the blood seeping out the woman’s wound which must have reopened in her movements. The paleness makes her eyes look all the more sickly, he thinks he spots a red tinge around blue iris but dismisses it, the pupil dilated to the extreme in her distress. At the heartwrenching whimper he goes to envelop her in a desperate bear hug, stopping short as he realizes the pressure it will put on the already abused stitches.

The only thing that breaks their standoff is the guttural growl of Vivi’s stomach, her momentary distraction rekindling the fierce hunger that’s only worsened in the minute since. Lewis is shocked out of his stupor by the unexpected noise, and manages to recover some decorum. “Right, right. Let’s get you… get you something to eat. Yeah. Something… something light. For your stomach-”

“Sushi.” The word is out of her mouth with no input from her brain, and conjugated with another harsh rumbling. She thinks she blushes, but the gnawing at her insides refuses to let her be embarrassed for long. “Sashimi. Sannakji. Hoe. Raw.  _ Now _ .”

Lewis is startled by the seriousness in her tone, but nods dumbly in reply. Vivi and food was not something to be gotten between. He sends a mental note to a passing deadbeat to head for the kitchen.

“O-okay, but. Please get back in bed? So you don’t hurt yourself more?” He can see her shivering, and the tremors only make her look worse. “I’ll uh, change your dressings while the beats get you food. Okay?”

“Go get some more blankets too, it’s freezing. Was I asleep the whole summer or something? It’s like an ice rink in here.”

Lewis neglects to correct her, if anything the mansion was slightly warm from his fretting about, but maybe the blood loss had something to do with it. He was hardly a doctor.

  
  


Vivi is freshly wrapped in gauze and blankets by the time there’s a rapping at the door, a deadbeat phasing its head in to chime the arrival of the food. The door is hardly open a blink before the woman has literally pounced on the poor spirit, devouring half the plate in the span of one moment to the next. She’s on hands and knees above the fallen tray of food, inhaling the raw fish like a starved animal, growling up at Lewis for  **_MORE_ ** with flashing red eyes. He’s so stunned he takes a physical step back at the display, Vivi was fast yes, but that? What...? Before darting down the hallway, slamming the door shut on the way. This was  _ wrong wrong wrong _ , but he grabs the only thing left in the fridge, a slab of raw steak, before racing back, getting tackled by the blue haired woman when he opens the door once again.

 

It’s only when she’s licking the juice off her fingers on the floor of the hallway that Vivi comes back to herself, staring wide-eyed at the resident spectre. She darts back through the open door with the same inhuman speed, huddling in the corner of her room and staring at herself in the floor-length mirror.

 

What was  _ happening  _ to her?

 

* * *

 

 

Elsewhere in the mansion a fretting mechanic is pacing, fidgeting as he passes back and forth before a veritable mountain of books their resident kitsune is frantically flipping through.

Mystery had been skeptical at first of their story of Vivi’s miraculous conversation, had smelled the death and grief in the room and thought it a shared hallucination. It wouldn’t have been the first time unfortunately, in his long years of travels, for him to see the death of a loved one cause such things for their bereaved. He had humored the broken boys though, helping move the body gently to the van, holding back his own tears for the loss of such bright life. He hadn’t the heart to break it their beloved’s had stopped beating well before he had left that cursed room, may it be eternally damned.

Now though, the hidden fox is racing through every piece of parchment that may hold answers to the sudden return of one lost too soon.

He and Arthur had been sequestered in the library, locked away from their blue haired friend, under the fantastical assumption that the woman had been turned into a  _ zombie _ . Such a fantastical notion, and yet the kitsune couldn’t find any semblance of what else could have caused a reanimation to such degree. Not a revenant or draugr, the changes had not been so advanced, and the woman certainly had done little to warrant becoming a lich. And he hadn’t smelled a ghoul or vampire, jiangshi or not, in the room before nor after the summoning. Had the interrupted magic done something to bind her spirit to her corpse? She wasn’t a ghost though, not only could she not have materialized so quickly, her body was very much still physical, and Lewis telling them of what had happened with the food told him she still had physical needs. It was starting to look like the boys may be right, little as he may want to admit it. But with little solid information on the undead despite his vast memory, Mystery was at a loss to even say Arthur was safe to be in the same room as his girlfriend, let alone any other pressing matters pertaining to Vivi’s new state.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've had this chapter about 60% written since the day I posted the first chapter, but no matter what I did the middle of this just did /not/ want to be written. But it's finally finished and I feel good about just posting it.
> 
> Life's been super hectic lately for me and doesn't seem to look like it'll let up anytime soon. Right now I only really have a few disconnected scenes in my head after this point rather than an actual direction to go in, so the next update may be a while. The muse has escaped containment again and I need to lay some traps for it. :p
> 
> PLEASE(!) hit me up on tumblr or in the comments if you're interested in throwing out ideas, they might spark something or even get integrated into a new chapter! (And also, you know, since it's really nice seeing people actually interested in things I make. Even if it's just a "cool!" or something. I truly and honestly appreciate them all! ;v;)

**Author's Note:**

> cccc:


End file.
